影响儿童心理理论发展的家庭对话环境及其启示

家庭对话环境是影响儿童心理理论发展的重要因素之一,主要体现在:家庭规模大小、兄弟姐妹间的相互关系、父母言语交流方式以及家庭成员间的假装游戏等.主动创造同伴间对话机会、积极改善言语交流方式和经常开展家庭假装游戏等有助于幼儿心理理论发展.     

假装游戏对幼儿心理理论发展的影响

本研究以48名3～4岁儿童为被试,借鉴以往假装游戏的干预方式,对幼儿进行假装游戏训练,以此探讨假装游戏对儿童心理理论发展的影响.结果表明:(1)游戏组儿童的心理理论后测成绩显著高于控制组,即假装游戏的训练促进了3-4岁儿童心理理论能力的发展;(2)在后测的心理理论任务总成绩上年龄效应极其显著,即训练后,实验组4岁儿童与3岁组儿童在心理理论成绩上差异显著.假装游戏可能通过游戏中的角色、实物转换,即用一个物体代替另外一个物体或想像一个不存在的物体、角色扮演等方式促进了儿童心理理论的发展.     

假装游戏对幼儿情绪情感发展的影响

假装游戏是学前儿童的主要游戏形式,对幼儿的心理发展具有积极意义。本文首先介绍了假装游戏的概念,并总结回顾近年来假装游戏在幼儿情绪情感发展方面的影响,探析如何在教育实践中通过假装游戏促进幼儿情绪情感健康的发展,以期对幼儿教育提供一定的指导与启示。     

论假装游戏对聋童心理健康的应用及其教育价值

假装游戏是儿童体验与表现社会化的游戏,也是幼儿以物代物的象征建构活动。假装游戏不仅适合普通儿童,对于聋童同样适用并且可以促进他们的认知、情感、个性、社会性的发展。本文探讨了假装游戏对聋童心理发展的作用及其在聋童教育中的应用,以便能更好地促进聋童心理健康。     

表演游戏与幼儿同伴关系干预

表演游戏是深受幼儿喜爱的一种游戏形式,能促进幼儿情感、认知和社会性的发展.以表演游戏为干预因子,并从认知、情感、行为三个维度入手,对幼儿的同伴关系发展进行综合干预,能将教师的干预融入游戏活动之中,让幼儿在自然的状态下接受干预,达到良好的干预效果.这种方法具有较强的可行性.     

游戏与幼儿的心理发展

任何人的孩提时代都是在游戏中度过的。游戏是最适合于幼儿的活动，也是幼儿最喜欢的活动。游戏对幼儿的心理发展起着重要作用。一、游戏可以促进幼儿的智力发展游戏是促进幼儿智力发展的最佳活动。幼儿在做建筑游戏，在玩水、玩泥沙以及制作一些玩具时，就能认识各种材料、各种物体的性质和特点，同时游戏能很好地促进幼儿感觉器官的感受性和感知能力的发展。在游戏中，幼儿不仅要活动，而且要想象，所以游戏又能促进幼儿想象能力的进一步发展。游戏中的想象就是“假装”．完全真实的事物或活动并不被幼儿当游戏玩。他们常把自己想象成假装…     

假装游戏对聋童心理健康的教育价值及应用

假装游戏是儿童体验与表现社会化的游戏,也是幼儿以物代物的象征建构活动。假装游戏不仅适合普通儿童,对于聋童同样适用,可以促进他们的认知、情感、个性、社会性的发展。探讨假装游戏对聋童心理发展的作用及其在聋童教育中的应用,能更好地发展聋童心理健康教育。     

假装游戏促进幼儿认知能力发展初探

假装是幼儿早期表达的使用和理解的能力符号,假装游戏是童年最有趣的活动之一。文章主要从假装游戏的表现特点、假装游戏与幼儿认知能力的关系进行剖析,探讨如何在实践中通过假装游戏培养幼儿的认知能力,促进幼儿的全面发展。     

幼儿心理理论发展的幼儿园相关因素研究综述

文章综述了近年来国内外关于幼儿心理理论发展的幼儿园相关因素的研究,发现幼儿在园的师幼关系、同伴关系和假装游戏等与幼儿心理理论发展存在密切的联系,提出今后应不断丰富心理理论研究的方法和工具,深入研究其影响机制和重视科研成果的应用。     

游戏促进幼儿心理理论发展研究述评

游戏作为幼儿的主要活动形式，对幼儿心理理论的发展起着重要作用。在介绍幼儿心理理论的概念、理论模型、实验范式、脑机制及影响因素的基础上，分析了捉迷藏游戏、假装游戏及游戏环境对幼儿心理理论的促进作用，同时探讨了当前研究存在的一些不足，主要包括研究对象不够全面、缺少对中介变量的研究、研究工具不够生态化等，并对该领域研究进行展望。     

The Contribution of Symbolic Skills to the Development of an Explicit Theory of Mind

Theorists have speculated about the symbolic underpinnings of theory of mind (ToM), but no study has examined them across the main developmental span of ToM. Here, the onset of symbolic understandings in three domains (pretend play, language, and understanding representations) and ToM was examined. Fifty‐eight children were tested on batteries of tasks four times from ages 2.5 to 5 years. Some significant interrelations among variables were seen at each age level. Canonical correlation analysis found that a subset of the symbolic variables was significantly related to ToM at ages 4 and 5, providing the best evidence to date that ToM is undergirded by a symbolic element that also supports language, pretend play, and representational understanding.     

The Relation between Individual Differences in Fantasy and Theory of Mind

The relation between early fantasy/pretense and children's knowledge about mental life was examined in a study of 152 3- and 4-year-old boys and girls. Children were interviewed about their fantasy lives (e.g., imaginary companions, impersonation of imagined characters) and were given tasks assessing their level of pretend play and verbal intelligence. In a second session 1 week later, children were given a series of theory of mind tasks, including measures of appearance-reality, false belief, representational change, and perspective taking. The theory of mind tasks were significantly intercorrelated with the effects of verbal intelligence and age statistically controlled. Individual differences in fantasy/pretense were assessed by (1) identifying children who created imaginary characters, and (2) extracting factor scores from a combination of interview and behavioral measures. Each of these fantasy assessments was significantly related to the theory of mind performance of the 4-year-old children, independent of verbal intelligence.     

Pretend Play Skills and the Child's Theory of Mind

Pretend play has recently been of great interest to researchers studying children's understanding of the mind. One reason for this interest is that pretense seems to require many of the same skills as mental state understanding, and these skills seem to emerge precociously in pretense. Pretend play might be a zone of proximal development, an activity in which children operate at a cognitive level higher than they operate at in nonpretense situations. Alternatively, pretend play might be fool's gold, in that it might appear to be more sophisticated than it really is. This paper first discusses what pretend play is. It then investigates whether pretend play is an area of advanced understanding with reference to 3 skills that are implicated in both pretend play and a theory of mind: the ability to represent one object as two things at once, the ability to see one object as representing another, and the ability to represent mental representations.     

Theory of mind and language in children with cochlear implants

Thirty children with cochlear implants (CI children), age range 3-12 years, and 30 children with normal hearing (NH children), age range 4-6 years, were tested on theory of mind and language measures. The CI children showed little to no delay on either theory of mind, relative to the NH children, or spoken language, relative to hearing norms. The CI children showed a slightly atypical sequence of acquisition of theory of mind concepts. The CI children's theory of mind performance was associated with general syntactic proficiency more than measures of complement syntax, and with time since implantation more than age at implantation. Results suggest that cochlear implantation can benefit spoken language ability, which may then benefit theory of mind, perhaps by increasing access to mental state language.     

Individual Differences in Theory of Mind,Aggressive Behavior,and Social Skills In Young Children

Research Findings. The present study examined relations between social-cognitive skills, aggression, and social competence using teacher questionnaires and tabletop tasks with preschool and kindergarten children. It was hypothesized that the acquisition of a theory of "mind," as indexed by an understanding of false beliefs, might be related to social behavior for this age group. Overall, results indicated that both generation of forceful solutions in a traditional social-problem solving task and performance on the false belief tasks were significantly related to social competence, after controlling for the effects of age, language comprehension, and teacher ratings of aggression. In addition, theory of mind understanding was a better predictor of social competence than performance on a more traditional social information-processing task that involved the generation of alternative solutions to interpersonal problems. Practice. The implications of these findings for preschool and kindergarten peer relations and their potential relevance to treatment of deficits in social skills are discussed. Specifically, training in an understanding of counterfactual thinking (e.g., through increased and structured opportunities to engage in pretend play and storytelling) may enhance preschooler social skills.     

Scaling of theory-of-mind tasks

Two studies address the sequence of understandings evident in preschoolers' developing theory of mind. The first, preliminary study provides a meta-analysis of research comparing different types of mental state understandings (e.g., desires vs. beliefs, ignorance vs. false belief). The second, primary study tests a theory-of-mind scale for preschoolers. In this study 75 children (aged 2 years, 11 months to 6 years, 6 months) were tested on 7 tasks tapping different aspects of understanding persons' mental states. Responses formed a consistent developmental progression, where for most children if they passed a later item they passed all earlier items as well, as confirmed by Guttman and Rasch measurement model analyses.     

Young children's recognition of the intentionality of teaching

Two studies examined the role of intention in preschoolers' understanding of teaching. Three- to 5-year-olds judged stories in which there was an intention to teach or not (teaching vs. imitation) for 4 different learning outcomes (successful, partial, failed, and unknown). They also judged 2 stories with embedded instructional intent (e.g., guided discovery learning) and several standard theory of mind tasks. There was an age-related change in the understanding of teaching. Five-year-olds distinguished teaching from imitation and recognized guided discovery learning. Understanding of imitation and false belief was related. The findings indicate that theory of mind is relevant to other means of knowledge acquisition besides perceptual access and that understanding intention could help young children to recognize instruction and identify its different forms.     

Age and language skills of deaf children in relation to theory of mind development

Using four traditional false-belief tasks, I investigated deaf children's age and expressive language skills in relation to their theory of mind development. The children's parents who signed reported on their own knowledge of a mental sign vocabulary. The results indicate age of the child to be strongly related to theory of mind development. Deaf children demonstrated an ability to pass the theory of mind assessment battery between the ages of 7 and 8 years, on average. In comparison, hearing children have consistently demonstrated the ability to perform such tasks between the ages of 4 and 5 years. Therefore, the results indicate deaf children are delayed by approximately 3 years in this cognitive developmental milestone. Expressive language skills of the children and sign language skills of the parents who signed were not found to be significantly related to the children's theory of mind development.     

Social interaction among deaf preschoolers. The effects of language ability and age

This study examined the relationship between deaf preschoolers' language abilities and their play behavior. Twenty-nine deaf children aged three to five years were observed during outdoor free play throughout the school year. Their language abilities varied widely and did not correlate with age. On the basis of two language tests, they were divided into three language ability groups--high, middle, and low. Language ability was found to be related to several aspects of play and social interaction. The children with high language ability were more likely than the other children to play with two partners at the same time (i.e., engage in triadic interaction), to interact with teachers, to prefer to play with children of similar language ability, to use language, and to receive language from their partners. Most of these effects seemed to be due solely to differences between the children with high language ability and those in the other two groups. Children in the low and middle language ability groups behaved similarly. Language ability was not related to any other aspect of peer relations. Thus, the impact of language ability seems limited. These results, in conjunction with past research, suggest that, for the most part, deaf preschoolers' language and social skills develop independently from each other.     

Preschoolers' Attributions of Mental States in Pretense

When young children appear to recognize that someone else is engaging in make-believe play, do they infer what the pretender is thinking? Are they aware that the pretender is thinking about a pretend scenario yet knows what the real situation is? Preschoolers ages 3–5 ( N = 45) viewed scenes from the Barney & Friends television series depicting either make-believe or realistic actions. Children were questioned concerning the presence of pretense and the thoughts and beliefs of the TV characters. The children where also presented with false belief and appearance/reality theory of mind tasks. Children who identified when TV characters were engaging in pretend play did not necessarily infer the pretenders thoughts and beliefs. Inferring pretenders' thoughts was related to performance on false belief and appearance/reality tasks, but simply recognizing pretense was not. These data support the view that children initially learn to recognize pretense from contextual cues and are able to infer pretenders' beliefs only with further development of metarepresentational ability.